Top Yemeni Official: UN Should Set Reopening of Sana’a Airport as Number-One Priority

During a meeting with visiting UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg in Sana’a on Tuesday, Mahdi Al-Mashat stated that the patients are stranded with the airport closure, stressing the need for the removal of restrictions on the entry of vessels carrying oil derivatives and natural gas into the port of Hudaydah and the lifting of the Saudi-led siege, presstv reported.

“Members of the [Riyadh-led] coalition of aggression must adhere to their obligations concerning the humanitarian dimension of the [UN-brokered] truce. Thousands of patients are expectantly waiting for the reopening of Sana’a airport, so that they can travel abroad for treatment,” Mashat noted.

Earlier, Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi, head of Yemen’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee, questioned the purpose of the UN envoy's visit to the country, especially as the logical and legitimate demands of the popular Ansarullah resistance movement have not been met yet.

“Have banking services and payroll been resumed, or the pledges made by the United States about the transfer of patients been fulfilled? What has really been done?” Houthi wrote in a post published on his Twitter page.

Meanwhile, the Yemeni foreign minister in the National Salvation Government said Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are currently looking for a way out of the Yemen conflict.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam television news network, Hisham Sharaf Abdullah reaffirmed that any political solution to the conflict must be indigenously crafted.

“The Persian Gulf Cooperation Council is trying to mislead the world and propagate the notion that Yemeni people cannot arrive at a national consensus,” he noted.

The top Yemeni diplomat also dismissed formation of Yemen's new presidential council as a “wrong and failed attempt”, stating it will not get anywhere as there are too many people involved in the task.

“The Yemeni Supreme Political Council has issued a statement, declaring it does not commit itself to what has been manufactured outside Yemen,” Abdullah continued, describing the Riyadh meeting as a fund-raising event for the participating parties.

“Political solutions must be found inside Yemen… Saudi Arabia and the UAE are seeking to exit Yemen quagmire, lay the blame for the worsening hiatus at the Yemenis’ door and plunge the country into a civil war,” the Yemeni foreign minister pointed out.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war against Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states.

The objective was to bring back to power the Hadi regime and crush the Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.

The war has stopped well short of all of its goals, despite killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and turning the entire country into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.